Audit slams former sheriff, part of The Banks sold, local abortion clinic could close

Early voting for the 2013 City Council and mayoral elections is now underway. Find your voting location here. Normal voting hours are 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., although some days are extended.On Oct. 29, local residents will be able to give feedback
to Cincinnati officials about the city budget — and also
nab some free pizza. The open budgeting event is from 6 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. on Oct. 29 at
1115 Bates Ave., Cincinnati.An audit of the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office (HCSO) found
former Sheriff Simon Leis crippled technological developments, stacked
leadership positions with political cronies and still kept his staff
fiercely loyal during his 25 years in charge of HCSO. The Oct. 15 audit
claims the agency was “largely frozen in time” and didn’t meet the most
basic modern standards, including a failure to adopt computer
spreadsheets and other modern technologies instead of keeping
paper-based records that only one person can access at a time. The audit
claims a few possible consequences for Hamilton County: outdated
policing policies, exposure to possible litigation and an overworked,
under-trained staff. To fix the mistakes, the audit recommends various
investments and changes to policies that could prove costly to the
county — perhaps too costly to a county government that has been forced
to make budget cuts for the past six years. Read more about the audit here.
Developers sold the apartments and 96,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space
in the first phase of The Banks for $79.5 million. In a memo, City
Manager Milton Dohoney claimed the sale is a sign of the strong market
that’s being built in Cincinnati. Dohoney noted that the sale will
provide nearly $1.2 million for the city and county, which will likely
go to other projects in The Banks, and allow Carter and The Dawson
Company to repay the city and county’s nearly $4.7 million retail fit-up
loan three years in advance. The sale should also increase the
property’s assessed value, which Hamilton County Auditor Dusty Rhodes previously
put at $52 million, or $27.5 million less than it actually sold for,
and subsequently lead to higher property-based tax revenue, according to
Dohoney.
The Ohio Department of Health (ODH) could force
the Lebanon Road Surgery Center, a Cincinnati-area abortion clinic, to
close after a health examiner upheld ODH’s decision to revoke the
clinic’s license because it couldn’t establish a patient transfer
agreement with a nearby hospital. Abortion rights advocates touted the
closure as another example of how new regulations in the recently passed
state budget will limit access to legal abortions across the state. But
ODH handed down its original decision for the Cincinnati-area abortion
clinic in November 2012, more than half a year before Gov. John Kasich
in June signed the state budget
and its anti-abortion restrictions into law. Meanwhile, Ohio Right to
Life praised the state for closing down or threatening to close down
five abortion clinics this year.
Reminder: Officials project the streetcar will have a much greater economic impact in downtown than Over-the-Rhine, despite what some detractors may claim.The Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office last night began threatening to arrest homeless people who refuse to leave the Hamilton County Courthouse and Justice Center and find another place to sleep, according to Josh Spring of the Greater Cincinnati Homeless Coalition. The sheriff’s office says the steps are necessary to put an end to public urination and defecation on county property, but homeless advocates say the county should focus on creating jobs and affordable housing to solve the root of the problem. CityBeat covered the issue in greater detail here.
Former Ohio House Speaker Jo Ann Davidson questioned her fellow Republicans’ legal threats
against Gov. John Kasich’s plan to bypass the legislature and get the
federally funded Medicaid expansion approved through the Controlling
Board, a seven-member legislative panel. Davidson says Kasich is on
“firm ground” legally because the state budget contained a provision
that allows the state’s Medicaid director to expand the program. The
Kasich administration on Oct. 11 announced its intention to call on the Controlling Board to take up the expansion, which will use federal Obamacare funds for two years to extend Medicaid eligibility to more low-income Ohioans. The Health Policy Institute of Ohio previously found the expansion would generate $1.8 billion for Ohio and insure nearly half a million Ohioans over the next decade.
Ohio Libertarians and Greens threatened to sue the state
if the legislature passes a bill that would limit ballot access for
minor political parties. The Ohio Senate already approved the
legislation, and an Ohio House committee is expected to vote on it at a
hearing on Oct. 29.
More charges have been filed
against a local spine doctor accused of carrying out unnecessary
surgeries in the Cincinnati area and Florence, Ky., and billing health
care programs millions of dollars, according to court documents released
Thursday.
A race car managed to swap fossil fuels for hydrogen power.

Early voting for the mayoral primary election begins
today. The top two winners of this round of voting will go head-to-head in the
Nov. 5 election. The candidates: Vice Mayor Roxanne Qualls, a Democrat who supports the streetcar and parking lease; ex-Councilman John Cranley, a Democrat who opposes the streetcar and parking lease; Jim Berns, the Libertarian who attempted to withdraw from the race but changed his mind a day later; and Sandra “Queen” Noble, an eccentric Independent candidate who sent an F-bomb-laden email to debate organizers.
Cincinnati Council’s Budget and Finance Committee approved the construction of Over-the-Rhine headquarters
for Cintrifuse, the startup incubator. The company has been working
from a temporary location downtown, but it claims it needs a better space
to continue attracting businesses, particularly those in the tech
field. Cintrifuse will be joined in its new home by CincyTech and the
Brandery. Although all council members voiced support for Cintrifuse,
Councilman Chris Seelbach disputed using Focus 52 funds to build the new
headquarters. The city administration previously told Seelbach that the
Focus 52 money wouldn’t be used to further develop Over-the-Rhine,
which has received a disproportionate amount of city funding to spur the
neighborhood’s revitalization.
The committee also approved changes for the next phase of The Banks,
which will include retail space and a nine-story apartment building with about 305
apartments. The first phase of The Banks filled
up fast and won a top award
— two big positives the city and county obviously hope to replicate with the next leg of the project.
It’s now up to the development team behind
the project and the Hamilton County Board of Commissioners to approve the next phase.
Council members and city officials voiced opposition yesterday to a tea party campaign to change Cincinnati’s pension system.
Council members acknowledged the current pension system has problems, but they
called the campaign, which is currently gathering petitions to get a proposal
on the November ballot, misguided and flawed. The proposal would change
the city’s pension system to use a defined contribution model similar to
401k plans that are common in the private sector. But just like private
sector plans, the new system might require paying into Social Security, which would
make the plan more expensive for Cincinnati.
Ohio House Republicans are being asked to hold oversight hearings
for JobsOhio, the state-funded, privatized development agency that has
been mired in controversy in the past few weeks. Most recently, Dayton Daily News
discovered that some members of the JobsOhio board are employed by, on
the board of or stockholders in companies that are receiving state aid
through JobsOhio. Republicans say JobsOhio’s privatized and secretive
nature allow it to move faster with deals that attract businesses and
jobs to the state, but Democrats argue the agency is too unaccountable
and might be wasting and misusing taxpayer money.
Billy Slagle, the convicted murderer who apparently hung himself over the weekend, died without knowing of a plea deal that could have prevented his scheduled execution. CityBeat wrote about Slagle’s case in further detail here.
The Ohio Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is upset that charges have been dropped against an allegedly abusive Amish dog breeder.
The group had pushed for charges against Jonas Beachy, the breeder,
after 52 dogs were pulled from his central Ohio farm with dental disease, feces-smeared coats and paws mangled by wire mesh
cages. Circleville Law Director Gary Kenworthy conditionally dismissed
the charges because of problems securing veterinarian records for the
dogs.
The Ohio Department of Job and Family Services (ODJFS)
announced in a statement today that the Ohio Human Trafficking Task
Force, the Ohio Department of Public Safety and ODJFS will be working
with the Ohio Network of Children’s Advocacy Centers to help minors who
are victims of human trafficking. The new collaboration is seen as
another step to stop human trafficking in Ohio, an issue that has haunted the state in the past.
Metro’s bus service is adding routes and changing connections on Aug. 18.
BuzzFeed has a list of “31 Ways To Tell You’re From Cincinnati,” but the list reads like something from 2001. Who’s avoiding Over-the-Rhine with all its new restaurants and after LumenoCity?
Popular Science has a rundown on how 3-D printing body parts will revolutionize medicine.

John Deatrick is taking over as project executive of the Cincinnati streetcar project, moving on from his previous work as project manager of The Banks. Deatrick’s hiring announcement happened in April, but it was delayed while City Council fixed the project’s budget gap. Deatrick and his team previously won an award
for their work at The Banks, and he says he will bring the same scrutiny
and success to the streetcar project. A new project manager for The
Banks is set to be hired in August. Since the streetcar project’s
inception, it has been mired in misrepresentations and political
controversy, which CityBeat covered in further detail here.
Local business leaders are calling on the city government to change its contracting policies to target minority- and women-owned businesses. Advocates argue the city’s inclusion rates have greatly dropped
since Cincinnati did away with its inclusion program in the 1990s, but
the city administration points out the rates are likely understated
because women- and minority-owned businesses are no longer required to report
themselves as minorities or women. The business leaders say the figures are too low regardless,
which could have big implications since minority-owned businesses are
more likely to hire minorities, who have twice the unemployment rate as
white residents. As a result of court rulings, Cincinnati needs to first
conduct a disparity study before it makes any changes that specifically target minorities or women.
Gabrielle Giffords’s anti-gun violence organization is opening an Ohio chapter
to promote legislation that intends to protect both the public
and the rights of gun owners. Giffords, a former U.S. representative
who survived an assassination attempt, has been touring around the
country — at one point coming to Cincinnati
— to speak out against gun violence. Gun control legislation
failed in the U.S. Senate in April after it fell short of getting 60 votes to overcome
procedural hurdles, even though polling shows a clear majority of
Americans favor such legislation.
Local government funding may be further reduced
as a result of recent tax cuts because the Local Government Fund traditionally gets a percent of state tax revenue. Specifically, critics are concerned
less state tax revenue will slow down “natural growth” in funding to
cities and counties. Last week, an analysis from Policy Matters Ohio
found the recently passed two-year state budget already reduces local government funding, following even steeper reductions in the previous budget. The cuts since Gov. John Kasich took office have cost Cincinnati more than $22 million.
A traffic camera ban would cost Ohio cities and counties millions of dollars in revenue.
Ohio gas prices are starting down this week.
Home-schooled and private-school students have a right to play on public school teams because of a provision in the recently passed state budget.
When Columbus’ parking meters were upgraded to accept credit cards, revenue jumped by 13.2 percent. Cincinnati’s meters will be upgraded as part of the parking privatization plan.Ohio air bases are undergoing review
this week as part of Congress’ attempts to gauge whether the nation’s
Air Force is prepared for current and future missions and homeland
defense.
Slow news day, Enquirer?
Florida researchers found “fat shaming” actually perpetuates obesity.
It would probably take 300 to 500 piranhas five minutes to strip the flesh off a 180-pound human.

It’s not even two weeks since Gov. John Kasich signed the two-year state budget, and he’s already pushing for the federally funded Medicaid expansion again.
Kasich, a Republican, called on fellow advocates and Democrats to lobby
Republican legislators into supporting the expansion. The
administration says it would need legislation passed by the end of the
summer if it’s to get federal approval for an expansion by Jan. 1.
Studies found the expansion would save the state money and insure nearly
half a million Ohioans in the next decade. But Republican legislators passed on
it, claiming the federal government can’t afford the expansion even though the federal government has long upheld its commitment to Medicaid. CityBeat covered the state budget and Medicaid expansion in greater detail here.
Hamilton County commissioners are expected later today to repeal a funding hold on sewer projects, just a couple months after the hold was passed in response to controversial
city laws. The city and county originally reached a compromise over the
laws, but the deal appeared to have fallen through when City Council failed to approve its end of the bargain. Still, commissioners are moving forward with removing the funding hold, according to WVXU. CityBeat covered the city-county conflict in greater detail here.
Designers, engineers and architects will compete over how they’ll cover Fort Washington Way in a few months, and Business Courier has some possibilities
for where the project may go. The project is supposed to connect
downtown and the riverfront, maximize economic development, encourage
recreational activities, preserve openness and more. Although the first
phase is just finishing, The Banks has already won awards, making the final connection between the area and downtown all the more important to city and county officials.
The Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana Regional Council of Governments (OKI) will hold a meeting tonight for its regional strategic plan.
Details are sparse, but OKI’s first plan since 2005 will likely put a
big emphasis on Cincinnati. A draft of the plan will likely be available
in 2014. The meeting will be at Memorial Hall from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.
MSNBC pundit Rachel Maddow was caught in a “pants on fire” statement by Cleveland’s The Plain Dealer after she claimed Ohio’s budget mandates women seeking an abortion to undergo a vaginal probe. The budget imposes new limits on legal abortions in Ohio
and effectively defunds contraceptive care, cancer screenings and other
non-abortion medical services at family planning clinics like Planned
Parenthood, but it doesn’t require women undergo a transvaginal
ultrasound.
Cincinnati topped Terminix’s annual bed bug list for most calls related to the critters, but it avoided a spot on another list for the highest increase in calls.
Warren County’s racino is now hiring.
One good thing that came out of Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign: swag for needy Kenyan youth.
Antimatter particles were detected erupting from solar flares.
One major problem in brain training studies: People always realize they’re being tested, particularly if they’re playing Tetris for hours.

Local job numbers continued their positive trend
in April, with Cincinnati’s unemployment rate dropping to 6.9 percent
and the rest of the region following suit. Michael Jones, research
director at the University of Cincinnati Economics Center, attributed
the job gains to improvements in manufacturing and continued growth in
health care jobs. Still, the public sector continued to lag behind the
private sector — a trend Jones says could change in the coming months as
government budgets are adjusted to match higher tax revenues resulting
from the recovering economy.
Downtown’s population growth slowed last year as available housing failed to match demand,
according to Downtown Cincinnati Inc.’s annual report. In the past few
years, the city has pursued multiple actions to meet demand,
particularly through public-private partnerships. Most recently, City
Council approved leasing the city’s parking assets to raise funds that
would help build 300 luxury apartments, but that plan is currently being held up in court.
The second phase of The Banks riverfront project will cost $62 million,
according to the report from Downtown Cincinnati Inc. That’s smaller
than the first phase, which cost $90 million. The second phase of the
project is expected to begin this fall, and it should bring 300
apartments and 60,000 square feet of street-level retail space to the
area by the end of 2015. The Banks also plans to build a $45 million
hotel, which is also expected to be complete in 2015. The funding for the projects is
coming through multiple public-private partnerships.
After the final
public hearing on the city budget Wednesday, Councilwoman Laure Quinlivan plans to introduce her own
budget plan that would avoid all city employee layoffs. A statement from Quinlivan
did not give much in the way of details: “My plan saves all city jobs
and restores all neighborhood programs. It requires common sense and
shared sacrifice of all city employees.” Most recently, council members
Chris Seelbach and Roxanne Qualls co-sponsored a motion that would eliminate fire layoffs and reduce police layoffs to 25 by making cuts elsewhere.
The Ohio Senate plans to vote
today on a measure that would effectively close down hundreds of
Internet “sweepstakes” cafes around the state in an effort to eliminate
illegal gambling activities. The cafes’ operators insist their
activities are not gambling but rather a promotional tool that helps
sell Internet time and long-distance phone cards.
Cincinnati’s zoning hearing examiner says he’s trying to reduce the time it takes to go through the zoning hearing process to less than 60 days.
Three major Ohio universities, including the University of
Cincinnati, and four hospitals, including Cincinnati Children's
Hospital, are teaming up to find out what causes premature birth.
Beginning July 1, some Ohio interstates will allow drivers to go 70 miles per hour. Find out which ones here.
At congressional hearings yesterday, U.S. senators
criticized Apple for legally taking advantage of the complex American
corporate tax system, but Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul put the blame on
Congress:
Russia is building robots to “neutralize” terrorists, and other researchers are working on robots that will attempt to rescue people after disasters.
The creator of the GIF says it’s pronounced “jif.”

Three CityBeat staffers do things on bikes they'd normally do in a car

A surprising thing happens when you carve out
some time in your schedule to travel by bike, even if you’re not an
expert — it’s a lot less complicated than it seems, and it’s likely to
be a lot more fun than you expect.

Local casino tops revenue, streetcar could get new director, Medicaid expansion to fail

Cincinnati’s Horseshoe Casino topped state casino revenues last month,
translating to $1.4 million in casino tax revenue for the city in
March. If the trend holds — a huge if, considering March was opening
month for the Horseshoe Casino — the city would get $16.8 million a
year, which would be above previous estimates from the state and city
but below estimates presented in mayoral candidate John Cranley’s budget plan.
Cranley and other city officials say casino revenue could be used to
avoid laying off cops and firefighters to balance the budget, but the
city manager’s office says it wouldn’t be enough.Two City Council decisions yesterday will allow the current project manager for The Banks to take over the streetcar project.
The two 5-4 decisions from City Council came in the middle of a tense
budget debate that could end with the layoff of 344 city employees,
including 189 cops and 80 firefighters. But John Deatrick, who could be
hired as executive director of the streetcar project as a result of the
measures, says his salary would come from the capital budget, which is
separate from the general fund that needs to be balanced in light of
structural deficit problems.
House Republicans are poised to reject
Gov. John Kasich’s proposed Medicaid expansion. The expansion, which
was part of Kasich’s 2014-2015 budget proposal, would have saved the
state money and insured 456,000 Ohioans by 2022, according to the Health
Policy Institute of Ohio. But it would have done so mostly with federal
funds, which state legislators worry will not be there years down the
line. The Medicaid expansion was one of the few aspects of Kasich’s
budget that state Democrats supported. CityBeat covered Kasich’s budget in further detail here.
PolitiFact Ohio gave Kasich a “Pants on Fire” rating
for his claim that his transportation budget and Ohio Turnpike plan “would make sure we have lower tolls than we’ve had through the history
of the turnpike.” PolitiFact explains: “Yes, the bill aims to keep tolls
from rising faster than the pace of inflation -- a practice that would
stand in contrast to KPMG’s findings from the past 20 years. And, yes,
the bill freezes tolls for 10 years on a small, targeted cross-section
of turnpike users. But not only are higher tolls a part of Kasich’s
plan, they are integral to the concept. The increased revenue will allow
the state to issue bonds to finance other projects. Furthermore, the
inflation cap is not written into the law, and the state has an out from
the local EZ-Pass freeze.”
Melissa Wegman will be the third Republican
to enter the City Council race. Wegman is a first-time candidate and
businesswoman from East Price Hill. She will be joining fellow
Republicans Amy Murray and incumbent Charlie Winburn.The struggling Kenwood Towne Place will be renamed Kenwood Collection as part of a broader redesign.
One program in President Barack Obama’s budget plan would task NASA with pulling asteroids to our moon’s orbit,
where the asteroids could then be studied and mined. The Obama
administration says the program will only involve small asteroids, so
big, killer asteroids will not be purposely hurled towards Earth.
New evidence suggests some two-legged dinosaurs were strong swimmers, further proving that unless we have extra asteroids to cause an extinction event, we might want to leave them dead.

A report issued by Director of Public Services Michael Robinson found Findlay Market would be the best place for a freestanding public restroom,
which could cost as little as $35,000. The idea has been heavily pushed
by Councilman Chris Seelbach, who has argued that the restrooms are
necessary to accommodate a growing population and wider activity in
Downtown and Over-the-Rhine.
A new Policy Matters Ohio report found local government funding has been reduced by $1.4 billion since Gov. John Kasich took office,
leading to a nearly 50-percent reduction in state funding. Most of the
cuts came from the elimination of the estate tax, which would have
provided $625.3 million to local governments in the 2014-2015 budget,
but it was repealed in 2011 by the Republican-controlled Ohio
legislature and Kasich. When presenting his 2013 budget proposal, City
Manager Milton Dohoney Jr. said the state funding reductions cost
Cincinnati $22.2 million in revenues for the year.
In 2012, the team behind The Banks’ public construction met or exceeded all four major project goals,
according to the annual report from The Banks Public Partnership.
Contractors installed public safety technologies throughout the
intermodal transit center and parking facility, awarded a trade contract
for a new Pete Rose Way pedestrian bridge and walkway and prepared
design and funding documents for a river walk along the Ohio River. The
project has also gone more than 400,000 hours without a lost-time
accident. The Banks previously won what John Deatrick, project executive, called the “Oscar” of planning awards, which CityBeat covered here.
City Council delayed a vote
on opposing the sale of more than 700 Section 8 units in Avondale,
Walnut Hills and Millvale because they want meet with the firm buying
the units first. City officials have scheduled the meeting for next
week. CityBeat previously covered Vice Mayor Roxanne Qualls’ opposition to the deal here.
The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency lifted a requirement
that forced any new sewer development that added waste water to the
county’s overall system to offset its gains with a fourfold reduction in
storm water taken in.
BuzzFeed, the popular viral video and pop culture website, listed the Cincinnati Public Library as No. 28 on the list “The 30 Best Places To Be If You Love Books.”
Ohio’s imprisonment of fewer youth may be part of a nationwide trend.
Three Cincinnati area businesses made Interactive Health’s “Healthiest Companies in America”: Standard Textile Inc., Totes-Isotoner and American Modern Insurance Group.
Mercy Health’s Anderson and Fairfield branches made the Truven Health Analytics ranking released this week, putting the two hospitals among the nation’s best.
Omya Inc. is receiving a five-year, 40-percent tax credit for completing a consolidation of its regional headquarters to Cincinnati, which should create 25 full-time jobs and generate $1.4 million in annual payroll.
Breaking news: Teenagers are horny. Headline from The Cincinnati Enquirer: “Hundreds of Madeira High students involved in sexting?”
A Dayton donut shop is apparently one of the best in the nation, according to Saveur magazine.
Do video games cause violence? Apparently, the debate is a lot more complicated than most people think.
Mouse brain cells can live longer than the mice they came from.

SUNDAY FEB. 17: Today marks the 50th birthday of
basketball star and cultural icon, His Airness, Michael Jordan. As one
of the most exciting and dominant athletes ever, Jordan won titles at
the collegiate and pro levels, was an All Star like 29 times and notably
saved the human race from alien criminals in Space Jam.

John Deatrick seems genuinely
excited and proud to be part of the riverfront project receiving the
American Planning Association’s (APA) 2013 National Planning Excellence
Award for Implementation, announced Jan. 9.